Are You Guilty of Making These Common Assumptions About Your Staff?

Can our assumptions have a powerful impact on Minimizing Turnover? Indeed, YES! Last week, we talked about the weight of responsibility we have to place our staff in their best roles in the office. This week, I want to touch on several assumptions we tend to make in that regard and how these assumptions especially affect our hiring process.

First is the subconscious assumption we can fall into – believing that others are perceiving a situation like we do and will respond to that situation as we do. Out of this assumption grows the situation of Squelchers and Squelchees. (I know I made that last word up… but it fits!) The Squelchers are those making these assumptions, expecting everyone around them to think and act as they are prone to do. But the line is crossed when these Squelchers respond negatively in these situations – whether through eye-rolling, arguing, shock or surprise, put-downs, refusing to listen to another viewpoint, etc.

The Squelchees are those on the receiving end of the Squelcher’s approach. They feel misunderstood, embarrassed, unappreciated, silenced, sometimes even humiliated. Obviously, this exchange can wreak havoc in an office environment (as well as a friendship or a family). I share this with the goal to help you be aware of the subtle ways you might be acting as a Squelcher or struggling as a Squelchee.

The second assumption is related to the first one, but how it applies to hiring. It is easy to hire either someone who is very similar to ourselves, or to someone near and dear to us. So we can tend to fill our staff with clones of our ourselves, or our spouses, or our best friends, because we are so comfortable with that type of person. But if they are not a true fit for the role they will fill in the office, we could be setting them (and our practice) up for failure.

A third assumption in regard to our staff is that if we pay them enough, they will be happy working for us. But there is an innate driving desire to use what we are gifted with, in ways that fit our design. In spite of their salary, most staff will chafe at being in a role in the office that goes against that design.

And finally, another assumption in regard to hiring – that if we advertise our need for responsible, hard-working staff, then hire someone who seems to fit those criteria and are relatively bright, we will have a successful result.

As I’ve shared before, when we were in orthodontic school, we knew we would go back to our small town to practice. Two dentist friends in town also knew of our plan, so saved their patients for our arrival. As soon as we set up practice, they contacted those patients and said, “Call them! They’re here!”

It was an amazing way to start a practice, but with just my orthodontist husband and me (a vocal music teacher) for staff, we needed to hire more help quickly! Being total rookies, we assumed it would be easy to hire most anyone for that help. We put a general ad in the local paper, received several promising responses, interviewed them – then hired a nice young lady from a local farming family who we thought would have a great work ethic and be just the help we needed. WRONG! It was an unmitigated disaster. She lasted just a couple weeks, then chose to stop working for us, to everyone’s relief.

Enter the DISC System and all we started learning about using it to hire the ideal person for each role in the office. As I shared in the blogpost, “Please Don’t Make Me Go Back to That Annoying Frustrating Job Again!!”, it is best to only hire the ideal DISC Combination if we want that person to be successful, to be the right fit for our office, and to last a long time in that role.

We developed a streamlined Hiring Process that I’m looking forward to sharing with you over the next several weeks. If you want to read more about it now, just click this link for my $5 e-book on “How to Minimize Turnover: Five Steps to a Fully Functioning Team Who Want to Stay”.

Also, if you would like to receive these “Keys to Minimize Turnover” blogposts by email each week, click here: “YES! Please send me Beth’s Minimizing Turnover emails!”

QUESTION: Do you have an “unmitigated disaster hire” story? I’d love to hear about your experience. Please share in the comment section below.